But soon the feast concludes the day,
  And yonder in the sun-warmed dell,
  The happy circle meet to tell
Their labours since the bygone May.

A bright-faced youth is first to raise
  His cheerful voice above the rest,
  Who bears upon his hardy breast
A golden star with silver rays:[109]

Worthily won, for he had been
  A traveller in many a land,
  And with his slender staff in hand
Had wandered over many a green: 

Had seen the Shepherd Sun unpen
  Heaven’s fleecy flocks, and let them stray
  Over the high-pealed Himalay,
Till night shut up the fold again: 

Had sat upon a mossy ledge,
  O’er Baiae in the morning’s beams,
  Or where the sulphurous crater steams
Had hung suspended from the edge: 

Or following its devious course
  Up many a weary winding mile,
  Had tracked the long, mysterious Nile
Even to its now no-fabled source: 

Resting, perchance, as on he strode,
  To see the herded camels pass
  Upon the strips of wayside grass
That line with green the dust-white road.

Had often closed his weary lids
  In oases that deck the waste,
  Or in the mighty shadows traced
By the eternal pyramids.

Had slept within an Arab’s tent,
  Pitched for the night beneath a palm,
  Or when was heard the vesper psalm,
With the pale nun in worship bent: 

Or on the moonlit fields of France,
  When happy village maidens trod
  Lightly the fresh and verdurous sod,
There was he seen amid the dance: 

Yielding with sympathizing stem
  To the quick feet that round him flew,
  Sprang from the ground as they would do,
Or sank unto the earth with them: 

Or, childlike, played with girl and boy
  By many a river’s bank, and gave
  His floating body to the wave,
Full many a time to give them joy.

These and a thousand other tales
  The traveller told, and welcome found;
  These were the simple tales went round
The happy circles in the vales.

Keeping reserved with conscious pride
  His noblest act, his crowning feat,
  How he had led even Humboldt’s feet
Up Chimborazo’s mighty side.

Guiding him through the trackless snow,
  By sheltered clefts of living soil,
  Sweet’ning the fearless traveller’s toil,
With memories of the world below.

Such was the hardy Daisy’s tale,
  And then the maidens of the group—­
  Lilies, whose languid heads down droop
Over their pearl-white shoulders pale—­

Told, when the genial glow of June
  Had passed, they sought still warmer climes
  And took beneath the verdurous limes
Their sweet siesta through the noon: 

And seeking still, with fond pursuit,
  The phantom Health, which lures and wiles
  Its followers to the shores and isles
Of amber waves, and golden fruit.